The USDA Farm Service Agency recently made several policy updates for acreage reporting for cover crops, revising intended use and late-filed provisions.
Reporting Cover Crops:
FSA made changes to the types of cover crops. Cover crop types can be chosen from the following four categories:
Cereals and other grasses – Any cover crop that is classified as a grass plant or cereal grain, and would include, but not be limited to, the following cover crops: cereal rye, wheat, barley, oats, black oats, triticale, annual ryegrass, pearl millet, foxtail millet (also called German, Italian or Hungarian millet), sorghum sudan grass, sorghum and other millets and grasses.
Legumes – Any cover crop that is classified as a legume, including, but not limited to, clovers, vetches, peas, sun hemp, cowpeas, lentils and other legumes.
Brassicas and other broadleaves – Any cover crop that is classified as a non-legume broadleaf, including, but not limited to, Brassicas such as radishes, turnips, canola, rapeseed, oilseed rape, and mustards, as well as other broadleaf plants such as phacelia, flax, sunflower, buckwheat, and safflower.
Mixtures – Mixes of two or more cover crop species planted at the same time, for example, oats and radishes.
If the cover crop is harvested for any use other than forage or grazing and is not terminated according to policy guidelines, then that crop will no longer be considered a cover crop and the acreage report must be revised to reflect the actual crop.
Acreage Reports: In order to maintain program eligibility and benefits, producers must timely file acreage reports. The final acreage reporting date for cover crops is July 15. Failure to file an acreage report by the crop acreage reporting deadline may result in ineligibility for future program benefits. FSA will not accept acreage reports provided more than a year after the acreage reporting deadline.

The Federal Trade Commission would take a look at past merger deals to see if regulators were too easy on the companies involved. That’s the promise of Joseph Simons, the White House nominee for FTC Chairman. Simons said during a Senate confirmation hearing, he would direct a formal study of closed deals, including some in the agriculture industry. He also said, if confirmed, he would police the conduct of big agribusinesses. He also pledges to sue if wrongdoing comes to the agency’s attention. U.S. agriculture has seen rapid consolidation in recent years, and U.S. regulators have mostly waved the deals through. If the federal government takes a more aggressive stance based on any information gathered as a result of a merger study, it would mark a new era of antitrust policy under Republicans. Simons is the co-chair of the antitrust group at the law firm Paul Weiss, and a former FTC antitrust official during the George W. Bush administration. There are more merger deals in the pipeline that will put antitrust regulators’ approach to the test. Bayer and Monsanto are still awaiting antitrust approval from the U.S.

Representatives Earl Blumenauer of Oregon and Jim McGovern of Massachusetts introduced the Saving America’s Pollinators Act. The legislation is designed to protect the health of honey bees and other critical pollinators. Estimates are that the U.S. lost one-third of honeybee colonies between 2016 and 2017, with similar losses occurring in previous years. To help bring a halt to the trend, the legislation suspends the use of bee-toxic insecticides (neonicotinoids), which have been linked to the declining population of pollinators. It also would require the Environmental Protection Agency to do a thorough evaluation to make sure using these insecticides is not adversely affecting pollinator populations. Blumenauer says, “A healthy food system depends on healthy pollinators. To keep the status quo is like flying blind. We shouldn’t be using these insecticides when we don’t know for sure how they’re affecting pollinators. The EPA has a responsibility to get to the bottom of this in order to protect our pollinators.” McGovern says that protecting pollinators is essential to the sustainability of our nation’s food supply. Studies estimate that one of every three bites of food Americans eat is from a crop pollinated by bees.

The Senate’s immigration debate ended on Thursday with no deal. Neither a bipartisan plan nor President Trump’s proposal had the required number of votes to pass. Every proposal considered couldn’t reach the 60-vote threshold. That leaves the undocumented immigrants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in limbo and lawmakers unsure of what’s next in the debate. In the other chamber, House immigration hardliners are getting more uneasy as they continue to push for a floor vote on Virginia Representative Bob Goodlatte’s proposal to reform the H-2A agricultural guestworker program. A Republican amendment aimed to enshrine the president’s four-part immigration framework, which would make cuts to legal immigration, was defeated by a wider margin of 36-60.House Freedom Caucus Chair Mark Meadows is calling for new leadership in the House Republican Conference. He’s also repeatedly criticized Speaker of the House Paul Ryan for not scheduling a floor vote. Politico says even if the bill got the 218 votes it needs to pass through the House, it’s unlikely to pass in the Senate.

The North American Free Trade Agreement negotiations will be just one of the topics President Trump will discuss with the President of Mexico when they meet in the next few weeks.

Bloomberg says they plan to discuss the relationship between the two countries and several pending issues. The meeting comes after several months of sometimes contentious NAFTA discussions and Trump’s insistence that Mexico pays for a border wall. Officials from both countries met recently to discuss issues like trade, immigration, security, and energy.

They also agreed to set up a meeting between the two presidents in the near future. Trump was scheduled to host Enrique Pena Nieto in January of last year, but Pena Nieto canceled after a dispute erupted on Twitter over the border wall.

It was during the presidential campaign that Trump first began to call NAFTA a horrible deal for America and pledged to withdraw if a new deal couldn’t be done. Trump indicated last month that he could be flexible with a deadline on completing NAFTA negotiations right before he repeated his threat to withdraw from the pact if the three countries can’t reach a deal that’s more “fair” to America.

Farm real estate markets remained relatively stable in the fourth quarter of 2017, according to the Kansas City Fed’s quarterly Survey of Agricultural Credit Conditions. In the Federal Reserve Tenth District, including Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Wyoming and parts of Missouri and New Mexico, values for all types of farmland declined only three percent from a year ago. Prior to the fourth quarter, farmland values had declined at an annual pace of five to seven percent, but those declines appear to have slowed more recently. The KC Fed says stability in farmland values was due, in part, to fewer sales. For the fifth straight year, a majority of bankers reported a decline in the volume of farmland sold. Looking ahead, a significant number of bankers expect values to remain steady in 2018. The report says fewer bankers expect farm income to decline in coming months, suggesting that economic conditions may continue to stabilize. Still, ongoing demand for financing amid a low income environment and slightly higher interest rates suggests that credit risks in the farm sector will remain a focus for 2018.

Growth Energy says federal data shows a clear and growing need for U.S. biofuels. A federal forecast released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration projects through 2050 based on current trends and regulations, an 18 percent increase in miles traveled by U.S. motorists in traditional light-duty vehicles. That’s an increase from 2.8 trillion miles in 2017 to 3.3 trillion miles in 2050. EIA also reports retail prices of motor gasoline and diesel fuel are projected to increase from 2018 to 2050, largely because of expected increases in crude oil prices. In response, Growth Energy regulatory affairs vice president Chris Bliley says: “Blending more homegrown, cost-efficient biofuels into the fuel supply is the ready-made solution to lowering prices at the pump while also dramatically reducing emissions.” Fuels like ethanol are currently saving the average American household $142, according to the American Journal of Agricultural Economics. Bliley says: “those savings will only grow as the demand for transportation rises in the decades to come.”